Change | E.D

Fourteen

Charlotte

"So are you ready for the best date of your life?" Isaac asks me teasingly as I climb into the passenger seat of his car the next night after work.

I had an great time at work today and hadn't wanted to leave early just to change. And no, it's not because of the boy who I'd been laughing with the entire afternoon. I'm not going to admit to that because I know it's only going to come back and bite me in the butt if I admit to liking spending time with him again.

No, for now I'm going to say that I worked on the afternoon of my first date ever so that I can save for college. It makes me sound smarter and not quite as pathetic.

But Ethan and I did have a really fun afternoon; that much I will admit. Annie was out because of a dentist appointment so Ethan somehow convinced me to put the closed sign up an hour early so that we could blare the radio across the store and sing along like complete losers. Hell, I think we even threw a few dance moves back in there.

Thinking about it makes me look out of the window towards the shop, and as soon as I do I see Ethan standing at the store window that faces us.

When he sees that he's caught my eye, he gives me a slight smile, but it's not the kind of smile that he'd been giving me inside. Earlier his smiles had been filled with pure happiness, a thing I haven't seen from him in a long time. This one, though, is fake.

I give him a slight wave and a smile of my own before turning back to Isaac, back to the guy who hasn't broken my heart and who's about to take me on my first ever date. I say in response to his earlier question, "What? Harry Styles going to be there?"

"Ha ha," he says sarcastically before placing that damn hand of his onto my knee. Good Lord, is this some kind of fetish for him? Does he just love girl's knees or something?

"But seriously though," I say, my curiosity getting the better of me, "Where are we going?" I ask.

"Just wait," he says with that teasing smile of his gracing his lips. "You'll love it, though, trust me."

I narrow my eyes at him in a playfully threatening manner, "I better."

Only ten minutes later, after a car ride filled with him asking me simple questions about myself, thankfully he didn't really ask much about my parents except for if they had any other kid. We pull into a parking lot and I immediately press myself to the glass of the window to see where he's taken me.

I see the laser green and blue sign that says Laser Tag Emporium immediately and can't help but let out a little squeal of excitement. I absolutely love this place.
Ethan and I used to come all of the time when we got bored of going to the movies or hanging out at his house. His parents would drop us off here with two twenty dollar bills and we'd spend an entire afternoon shooting each other in the dark. I haven't been since our friendship ended, though, and haven't really thought too much of it.

But now that I see it standing there in all of its brightness, I can't help but be thrilled that he's taken me here. Though he's been a little too touchy-feely for my taste lately, he sure knows how to pick a date place.

I look back at him and see a satisfied and relieved expression on Isaac's face before he asks me, "So you're okay with this, I'm taking?"

"I love this place!" I say happily, not even caring that I probably sound like a six-year-old little boy. "I used to come here all of the time!"

He cuts the car off and starts taking off his seatbelt as he says, "Good. No other girls I know like this place but I figured you would. You're cool like that."

"Of course I am," I joke cockily before slipping my seat belt off as well and then hopping out of his car. I meet Isaac by the front of his car and then together we walk into the big stone building, my excitement growing tenfold when we step inside of the familiar lobby.

Huge plastic pillars rise up to the black tiled ceiling, blinking laser lights wrapped around them to give it that outer space feel. Arcade games line the dark grey walls, mostly boy teenagers standing behind them either playing or cheering on their friends.

It brings back so many memories, pictures of me tugging on Ethan's hand and leading him to the front counter so that we can get to playing as soon as possible playing like a black-and-white movie inside of my head.

My heart warms when I remember that one time when Ethan caught up to me while playing the game, the two of us having been playing a cat-and-mouse game the entire time, and wrapped his arms around my waist and twirled me around while laughing, "I got you!" in my ear before shooting me with his little plastic gun.

All of a sudden, I feel like crying. Although the two of us are getting along so much better now, it's never going to be like that anymore. The two of us are never going to have such an easy, natural-as-air friendship. Though we may try to act like it never happened, that awkward air of rejected feelings and two years of silence is always going to surround us. We're never going to be that happy before.

"Hey, you okay?" Isaac's voice and the feeling of his warm hand wrapping around my tiny one effectively snaps me out of my emotional stupor.

I immediately feel terrible for thinking about Ethan on a date with another guy. This is about Isaac and me, not Ethan and me. I need to remember that.

So while pushing all old-movie like thoughts about Ethan and I out of my head, I intertwine my fingers through his and then give him a reassuring smile. "I'm great," I say, before letting him lead me up to the counter and watching him buy three games worth of tickets for the both of us.

Our first game doesn't start for twenty minutes, so Isaac and I battle each other at air hockey and and skee ball. While he crushes me at both skee ball and air hockey, I eventually kick his ass at Guitar Hero. By the time that we slip on our black vests and are preparing to enter the laser tag room with eighteen other people, I can honestly saying that I'm having the best time that I've had in a really, really long time.

While some awkward, acne-ridden teenage employee gives anyone who has never played instructions, Isaac takes a step close to me and asks, "You ready?"

"Hell yeah," I tell him happily, hitting the area of his vest that's over his chest with my black plastic gun. "I'm going to kick your butt."

"Oh we'll see about that," he smiles evilly at me just as the buzzer goes off and the lights in the holding room start to flicker, letting us know that the game is about to start and that we're free to enter the arena.

Everyone stampedes through the double doors to get into the room, making Isaac and I pretty much the last ones to enter.
There's a giant projection the only wall that's visible from every spot in the room that is counting down the seconds until the game starts. As of right now, we have two minutes to disperse into our hiding spots.

I go to run away from my date that's on the other team, but he quickly grabs me by one of the loose straps on my vest and pulls me back to him. I look at him bewildered, wondering why he's not letting me run away from him. That's the whole point of the freaking game!

I get my answer, though, when he leans in and whispers, "Game on," before leaning in and pressing the lightest of kisses against my shocked lips. He pulls away and looks at my completely stunned expression, gives me a little wink and then darts off into the shadows of the room.

It takes me a few seconds to recover from the feeling of actually having been kissed, of actually having had a guy put his mouth on my own, but once I do, I know that I have to kick his ass for doing that to me.

Who the hell does he think he is kissing me like that? He gives me my first kiss in a dark laser tag room where any pre-pubescent boy could have seen?

Oh, he's going down.